James Holmes’ attorneys are understandably aggressive in seeking to protect his rights and minimize the accused killer’s chances of ending up on death row, but they’ve gone overboard on occasion, too.

And when they recently asked Arapahoe District Court Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. to suppress transcripts of proceedings held in open court, and remove the case filings and index from a court website, they reached the point of absurdity.

Thankfully, Samour refused Friday to further restrict information about the case against Holmes, accused of opening fire in an Aurora movie theater and killing 12 people. It was a welcome development respecting public access.

The request, if granted, would have severely limited the ability of news outlets and the public to view case information. Media organizations, including The Denver Post, strongly objected.

As Samour notes: “… the court has granted every request to file a pleading suppressed, and both the parties and the court have redacted pleadings and orders when appropriate before they were uploaded to the court’s web site.”

Taking the Holmes case off the court’s website would have been a burden, not only to those interested in the case, but to the court system as well.

The request seemed to be more about making it difficult to get information about the Holmes case and less about finding unbiased jurors.

And as Samour pointed out, the voir dire process, in which prospective jurors are questioned, is sufficient to protect Holmes’ right to a fair trial.

That’s why the decision to maintain electronic access and allow transcripts of public proceedings to be released was so clearly the right call.

This is a difficult case, and while the defendant has a right to a fair trial, the public also has rights, including the ability to follow the case and see for themselves that justice is served.

Many were not surprised by the prompt verdict Monday in the sexual-assault case in Denver involving Taylor Swift. A jury of six women and two men concluded within hours that a Denver radio host had groped Swift _ grabbed her butt beneath her skirt during a photo shoot, as his wife stood on the other side of Swift.

Touch not that statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville. Let it stand, but around it place plaques telling the curious that the man was a traitor to his country who went to war so white people could continue to own black people.